


Spare Change

by Carrogath



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrogath/pseuds/Carrogath
Summary: Hana meets Yuna at an old-school arcade not for the first time, but for the second.





	Spare Change

Hana might’ve seen her once, twice. In the hallways, after classes, during orientation or some other school-wide event. They’re not in the same class, or she definitely would have remembered her.

She’s pretty. Not extraordinarily so, Hana thinks. She doesn’t do anything trendy like dye her hair or wear lots of makeup, so she tends to blend in with the other girls. Slightly taller than average, maybe, conservative fashion sense, but there’s something about her expression, or the way she carries herself, that makes Hana want to take another glance at her long after they’ve passed each other.

She doesn’t connect the face to a name until well into their second year. There’s a Gwishin attack off the coast, much more aggressive than the past few years’ have been. News coverage is immediate and relentless. A few of the smaller Omnics make landfall, only to be shot down by the Navy.

Then, one of the first Goliath-class machines rises from the water. It’s massive from the videos—at least twenty stories higher than the tallest skyscraper in Busan. Fighter jets are deployed first, then bombers to destroy the Goliath and anti-air to deal with the smaller fliers hurtling themselves into the city. Class is canceled for the next week—perhaps indefinitely. Hana and her family stay home at first. Then the power goes out. Traffic in the city lasts for days; they move inland, to be with relatives, away from the destruction.

Hana is miserable. They have power, but the internet is still out, even as far away from the fighting as they are. She plays on her handhelds, but it starts to feel a little pointless knowing that their house might be destroyed by the time they come back. Her mother encourages her to talk a walk around town, but even in 2073, it seems there are still places in Korea that are seriously underdeveloped. There’s a convenience store and some office buildings and a bunch of houses, but the streets are empty. It’s as if no one lives here.

Her dad tells her there’s an old-school arcade downtown, or what counts for downtown here anyway. She’s worried about her friends—about Busan, about Korea—and everyone’s been scattered around since the attack. Some people won’t go back, probably. It’s just not safe anymore.

She walks down the street in dead silence, until she finds the flashy, noisy, electricity-guzzling facade of the local arcade. There’s only one other person there today.

It’s her.

The arcade machine is the Street Fighter 50th Anniversary Special Edition, which would make it over thirty years old, by now. Still, it’s in good enough condition to play, given the fact that someone’s using it. She’s playing Karin against an AI-controlled… Who is that? Not Zangief. Not Birdie. Hana squints and takes a step closer. The mystery girl ends the match with a finisher—”O _ho_ hohohoho,” blares from the speakers—and then she turns around. They make eye contact.

Her name is on the tip of Hana’s tongue and by this point Hana knows she’s seen her somewhere else, outside of school. But she speaks first.

“Are you Hana Song?” she asks. She smiles. She has no reason to smile at her. Why is she smiling?

Hana smiles back on reflex and nods. “We go to the same school,” she says. “Um…”

The girl pauses, and then says, “Oh, I think we do.” She rattles off the name of their high school, “Right?”

“Yeah.”

It’s surreal. There are Omnics ravaging their hometown, and here they are speaking for the first time—to Hana’s memory anyway—at an old-fashioned video game arcade surrounded by UFO catchers and dance pads and bright, flashing lights.

Hana swallows a bit now that they’re facing each other. She feels shy, especially since the girl doesn’t seem to have remembered her from school.

Her smile grows bigger. “D.Va?” She gives her a look, like she’s supposed to remember.

“You’re Yuna Lee.”

That’s her name; it’s Yuna Lee. She was on the second-place team in the Busan Grandmasters Guild Spring Open, right after Hana’s. Hana had gotten scouted a few weeks ago by an e-sports team as a result, and they were supposed to start training in the summer.

Yuna, though… What was it about Yuna that everyone had been talking about? She was too good for her team, definitely, but there was something more pressing, more serious.

“That’s right. I don’t think I ever got a chance to properly congratulate you,” she says. “You play exceptionally well. It’s no wonder you received so many sponsorship offers.” She’s being so polite.

“You haven’t been recruited yet?” is the first question that comes to mind.

“No,” she says shyly, “I can’t. It’s just a hobby. My family has… other plans for me.”

“Oh,” says Hana. She can feel the disappointment settle in. “You were so good, though! I hope we can play again, sometime. You know, after all of this stuff…” she struggles to finish her thought, “is finally over.”

“Yeah.”

Then they’re quiet.

“I didn’t realize we attended the same school.” She laughs nervously. “I’m sorry I never noticed.”

“I’m sorry I forgot that I played you in the tournament,” says Hana. “You were such a good tank; we had a hard time against you.”

The compliment is double-edged, she can tell. Yuna’s brow crinkles in acknowledgment.

Then she looks behind her, at the machine. “Oh. Did you want to play? I didn’t mean to get in your way.”

Hana looks at the machine, and then back at her. It feels wrong to bring up the news, or the fact that there’s a battle going on in Busan right now. The army has these specialized drones that they’re supposed to deploy against the Gwishin, but they haven’t been very effective, even when they’re being remotely-controlled. It doesn’t make Hana feel any better about the war effort.

She’s surprised Yuna can still play like this, though. She hasn’t been in the mood for days.

“No.” She can’t think of a better way to word it, that she’s more interested in Yuna than the game. Yuna seems friendly, though, and given everything else that’s going on, it’s not like they have anything better to do.

“Ah,” says Yuna, “you’re here to escape the fighting. Right?”

“Yeah,” she replies.

She brushes her hair away from her face. “It’s too bad. It’s been so disruptive for our education—for the entire country.” Then her gaze goes far away. “This town is quiet, but…”

She’s rich.

That was the other part Hana had forgotten. The rumors surrounding her entry into the competition had been kind of mean. She had connections to one of the big conglomerates—the _chaebol_ —and her parents weren’t too happy that she was spending so much time on games. She attended the competition alone, and given how much tension it must have been causing at home, she blew everyone’s expectations out of the water.

“Your father is a professional e-sports player, isn’t he?” asks Yuna.

“Yeah. He’s a semi-retired Starcraft pro.”

“Lucky. He must be proud of you.”

Hana smiles wryly. “He thinks I still have a long way to go in Starcraft, but I’m not that interested in the game.”

Then Yuna looks straight at her. It’s a little too direct, and Hana glances away, awkward.

“Are there any openings on your team?”

“Uh, yeah,” she says, “we’re missing… a tank.”

Oh.

Yuna isn’t looking at her anymore. “I see.”

Hana knows exactly what she’s thinking. She opens her mouth, and then closes it. Images of the Gwishin flash through her head. They might not even have a team after this, and even if she offered her the spot, the actual recruitment process is out of her hands. She doesn’t want to bluff too hard, even to be polite. There’s acknowledging that someone is good at something, and then there’s getting their hopes up for no reason.

They’re sixteen years old. They have nothing to lose.

“I can put in a good word for you,” she says, in as understated a tone as she can manage, “if you want.”

Yuna looks surprised that she even offered at all. Did she misread her? “Oh. Oh,” she laughs. “If you could. I don’t know if I could even accept, but it would be… I think it would legitimize my interest in the game. It is a viable career choice, at least in South Korea, and if that’s what it takes to convince them, then I would appreciate if you could make the effort. If it’s not too much to ask.”

“Uh-huh,” she replies, dumbly. “We could always find someone else to fill the spot, if you had to refuse.”

“OK,” she says, and smiles. “Thank you.”

They play three rounds on the arcade machine. Yuna is too good with her feints and counters for Hana to get anywhere with Zangief, so she switches to Chun-Li in the third. Yuna is a good sport about it, though.

“One more round?” Hana offers.

“No,” says Yuna, “ah…” She looks at the exit. “I should really be going.”

She doesn’t sound like she’s telling the truth, exactly, but Hana decides not to push her luck. “Why don’t we trade phone numbers?” she asks. “That way I have a way to contact you if they want you on the team.”

“Yes, of course.” She bows, just enough to show her appreciation. “Thank you for the kind offer.”

“Oh, um,” Hana says, as they’re exchanging numbers, “I’m really going to do it, you know. I want you on the team.”

“I know.” Yuna’s smile is warm and genuine, and it gives Hana butterflies that she won’t recognize in herself for months. “Let’s plan to play again later, then.”

She excuses herself, and then she’s gone, leaving Hana alone in the flashing, beeping interior of the arcade.

**Author's Note:**

> Hana's maining Zangief in Street Fighter is a reference to one of my other fic, New Homes. Likewise, Yuna's playing Karin is a reference to the fact that she has ties to a powerful conglomerate.
> 
> This fic, as well as my other D.vamon fic, Star Stuff (and its extra chapter), take place in a similar universe in which the MEKA program has been privatized by a foreign corporation to profit from ad revenue generated by the pilots' (specifically D.va's) PR campaigns, after the Korean government sells it to recoup major financial losses from fighting the war. Yuna tries to leverage her family connections to influence the military, as well as Hana and the public at large, to pressure the corporation into reinvesting in technology to allow the drones to be operated remotely without interference from the Gwishin so they no longer have to be manned.
> 
> Basically, the idea tries to provide some justification as to why and how D.va could be literally fighting a war and still somehow find the time to film soda commercials and give press conferences after the rest of her team has nearly died. She's not as bad as Hammond, I guess...


End file.
